Silver Center

Zucker maintained the foundation and many other features of the original university building but not the Gothic facade, partially for sake of historic continuity.

Today, NYU owns nine other buildings designed by Zucker that were built in this formerly commercial area, as lofts and wholesale stores.

The Brown Building was the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which generated many of New York City's current labor laws.

In 1927, due to the pressures of a growing post-war student body, NYU ejected commercial tenants to use the space for academic purposes.

Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman lived and taught and privately lectured there, Winslow Homer painted there, and architects Alexander Jackson Davis and Richard Morris Hunt had offices there.